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General Conditions in the Eighteenth Century 403 same crude farm implements were still used and were roughly made in the neighboring village. The wooden plows were con- structed on the model of the old Roman plow; wheat was cut with a sickle, grass with an unwieldy scythe, and the rickety cart wheels did not have iron tires but only wooden rims. 693. Wretched Houses of the Peasants. The houses occupied by the country people differed greatly from Sicily to Pomerania, and from Ireland to Poland ; but, in general, they were small, with little light or ventilation, and often they were nothing but wretched hovels with dirt floors and neglected thatch roofs. The pigs and the cows were frequently as well housed as the people, with whom they associated upon very familiar terms, since the barn and the house were commonly in the same building. The drinking-water was bad, and there was no attempt to secure proper drainage. Fortunately everyone was out of doors a great deal of the time, for the women as well as the men usually worked in the fields, cultivating the soil and helping to gather in the crops. Country life in the eighteenth century was obviously very unattractive for the most part. The peasant had no newspapers to tell him of the world outside his manor, nor could he have read them if he had had them. Even in England not one peasant in five thousand could read at all. 694. Towns still Medieval in the Eighteenth Century. In the towns also there was much to remind one of the Middle Ages ( 409 ff.). The narrow, crooked streets, darkened by the over- hanging buildings and scarcely lighted at all by night, the rough cobblestones, the disgusting odors even in the best quarters, all offered a marked contrast to the European cities of today, which have grown tremendously in the last hundred years in size, beauty, and comfort. 695. London. In 1760 London had half a million inhabitants, or about a tenth of its present population. There were of course no street cars or omnibuses, to say nothing of the thousands of automobiles which now thread their way in and out through the press of traffic. A few hundred hackney coaches and sedan chairs served to carry those who had not private conveyances and could